The invention relates to a motor-car radiator which is particularly suitable for use in the cooling system of an external combustion engine, said radiator having a number of parallel cooling water pipes which communicate at one end with an inlet and at the other end with an outlet for cooling water. The pipes are connected by a number of metal components, for example strips or gauze, extending at right angles to said pipes and being in a head conducting contact therewith.
In combustion engines, only a part of the evolved thermal energy is converted into mechanical energy, while the other part has to be dissipated as heat due to energy losses. A part of said heat due to energy losses is dissipated together with the hot exhaust gases, while another considerable part is given off to the ambient air via the cooling system and the radiator present therein. This radiator usually is situated in the front of the car in which the engine is present as a traction means.
When, as has been usual up till now, an internal combustion engine is used as a traction means, the space in the front of the motor-car usually is sufficient cooling capacity without too may difficulties. If, however, an external combustion engine, for example the Stirling engine or the steam engine, is used as a source of propulsion, difficulties occur immediately in connection with the radiator. As a matter of fact, the amount of thermal energy in this type of engines which has to be dissipated to the atmosphere via the radiator is much larger than in internal combustion engines. This means that the cooling capacity of the radiator has to be increased.
A first possibility of achieving this is to use a conventional radiator having a larger front face area. However, it will soon become apparent in this case that the dimensions of the radiator become too large for the front of the motor-car. A second possibility could be an increase of the cooling capacity per surface unit by refining the construction of the radiator, so by using narrower flow ducts for the air, or by increasing the length of the ducts by using a thicker radiator. This meets with two objections. First of all, with an acceptable front face area, these measures result in a radiator having such a large resistance to flow that the fan which is then necessary requires an unacceptably large power to draw in the required amount of air. Secondly, the fine flow ducts for the air will soon give rise to pollution of the radiator by insects and so on.
A third possibility which has been considered in carrying the invention into effect is the arrangement in V-shape of a number of conventional radiator units. Such a shape of radiator is known from United Kingdom Pat. No. 506,146 for incorporation in the wing of an airplane. Since the thickness of the conventional radiators is from 5 to 10 cm it will be obvious that, in order to obtain herewith an increase of the radiator surface area without increasing the overall transverse dimension, a radiator will be obtained having very a large dimension in the longitudinal direction which is unacceptable in motor-cars and is furthermore unattractive because the occurring flow losses in the deep V-shape reduce the effect of the increase in surface area.